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A nice summary piece by Donald Clark titled "Times tables – the phony, proxy war between traditionalists and progressives" which looks at the arguments both for and against rote memorisation of times tables, noting the benefits to confidence and the automaticity of memorisation in further calculations, whilst also commenting on the time that can be spent only doing this and the potential drop in confidence as a result of "failing" testing. But the summary is balanced and fair - use the right tools for the job and, as with everything in learning, the right path is more nuanced. Memorisation clearly has an important place.